DuPont to Expand in Production of Materials for Lithium-Ion Car Batteries

By Jack Kaskey -
Aug 3, 2010

DuPont Co. plans to expand production
of a material used in electric-car batteries to challenge market
leaders Polypore International Inc. of the U.S. and Asahi Kasei
Corp. and TonenGeneral Sekiyu K.K. of Japan.

DuPont is building a factory to make separators for
lithium-ion batteries in Chesterfield County, Virginia. The
plant will be able to supply 20 percent of current demand for
hybrid and electric vehicles when it opens early next year, the
Wilmington, Delaware-based company said today in a statement.

Energain separators, made from spun nanofibers, boost power
15 percent to 30 percent and increase battery life as much as 20
percent compared with competing materials, DuPont said. The
global high-performance lithium-ion battery market will be worth
$7 billion by 2015, DuPont said.

“We have got an invention here that looks very
promising,” Thomas G. Powell, president of DuPont Protection
Technologies, said in a telephone interview. “Our material is
fundamentally different from any that is used elsewhere.”

DuPont, the third-largest U.S. chemical maker, made initial
quantities of the separator material in Wilmington and Seoul for
evaluation by battery producers and automakers. The Virginia
plant will cost about $20 million to build, with additional
production investments to be made as demand merits, Powell said.

Separators keep a battery’s positive and negative
electrodes from touching while allowing lithium ions to pass.

The three largest producers of lithium separators --
Polypore, Asahi Kasei and TonenGeneral -- have 90 percent of the
market, Polypore said in March. TonenGeneral is a unit of Exxon
Mobil Corp.

Dow Chemical Co. and Exxon Mobil are the two largest U.S.
chemical makers by sales.